Wishing You Were Here
by lfben
Summary: Life does go on, even after those we love are gone. EO, AU, oneshot


**Wishing You Were Here**

Olivia Benson looked out over the city from her apartment and bit her lip trying to suppress the tears she had been holding back for days now. The dark sky thundered and brought the promise of rain later that afternoon. It seemed ideal though that all the heavens and earth should mourn the loss of such a man as Elliot Stabler. He had died unexpectedly, and now his loved ones were left behind to stumble on without him. For Olivia, it seemed an impossible feat for he had been like air to her.

The cool glass against her forehead calmed her. It temporarily relieved the chaos that had taken over her mind and body in days since his death. His death was such a cliché. Shot in the line of duty, a common demise for anyone who carried a badge. For all the heroics it showed, it seemed wrong for his life to end like that. The trite ending didn't fit the extraordinary man.

"Mom…"

Little hands tugged at the material of her black dress. She was torn from her morbid thoughts back to the real world. She looked down into a set of brown eyes that matched her own. Lucy held up two identical black shoes that weren't any longer than the palm of Olivia's hand. Olivia looked at the shoes turning them over in her hands. The pair had been nice, the kind of shoes that every little girl wears with her favorite dress. They were now covered in scuffmarks from numerous afternoons of playing in the park with Elliot. Jump rope had been their favorite game, and Lucy went through enough pairs of shoes to prove it.

She took her time carefully strapping the shoes to her daughter's feet as she put off leaving for the funeral. She hadn't allowed herself to cry, not yet. When she cried for him, it would be where no one could her sobs. But seeing him laid out in the coffin for all the world to see would make it real, he would really be gone then. It would take all her strength not to lose control when she saw him like that. She didn't want him to be gone. She needed him. It had taken her a long time to reach the point where she realized that she depended on him. She had always been closed off; things were easier that way. If no one got in, no one could hurt her. She had had more than her share of pain in life, and she wasn't willing to make herself that vulnerable. Elliot hadn't changed her rule; he was simply the exception to it.

Lucy's little legs didn't quite reach the floor of the car and, therefore, she spent the entirety of the ride to the funeral swinging them back and forth with a slight thud when they collided with the edge of her seat. Neither of them spoke after leaving the apartment. Even at five, Lucy knew when her mother needed to be left alone. She was lost now. Her daddy always made things better, but he wasn't here now. She could see nothing to do but let her mother think in relative silence.

They had sat with the other men from the precinct. All who bowed their heads through the service in an attempt to conceal their tears. Olivia blinked back her own forcing herself not to cry. She would allow her tears to fall later when she was alone. The somber air at the precinct since Elliot's death had been suffocating, and whether they had been mourning for Elliot or for her was unclear. It was blatantly obvious that when he had died so had she. She went through the motions, but without the life and enthusiasm she had once possessed. It had been no secret to anyone there that they had loved each other, but as well-known a fact it was, it was an unspoken one.

He had been her friend, her partner, her lover, her companion, and so much more. He had been all those things she didn't believe in: her other half, her soul mate, her one true love. All that nonsense that filled young girls' heads had no place with her, and yet, he had been all of those things to her. She had loved him more than she ever imagined she could love anyone, and she had let him into her heart. Now, she was alone and her heart was inside the wooden box with the corpse of her lover.

She watched as his wife and his children, who were all practically grown now, filed out of the church. She had avoided them for years not wanting to have to look any of them in the eye. She had deceived them all. She pretended he wasn't anything important to her, and when they had least suspected it, she had secretly stolen his heart. He had loved her, but he had stayed with them. For that, she should have hated all of them – him, for not caring enough to do right by her, and them, for being enough to keep him away. His mind and heart may have always been with her, but physically, he had been miles away playing the happy family.

The trip to the burial site was relatively short and Olivia opted to stand as far from the Stabler family as she could. She had felt their eyes glaring at her as she approached tent set up by the funeral home. They hated her for what she had done to their family; in their eyes, she was the only one at fault. She stood like a statue; only her fingers moving as she unconsciously twirled small strands of her daughter's light brown hair. It didn't take long for Lucy to tire of standing and demand to be held. Olivia picked her up, holding her as close as she could. She still had her precious little girl, their Lucy-Goosey.

After the short ceremony, Lucy struggled furiously against her mother's arms until she was set back down. The melancholy environment hadn't hindered her impatience in the slightest. Picking a dandelion from a patch of weeds nearby, she blew zealously until all the tiny seeds had been sent flying off with the wind to blossom elsewhere.

"Make a wish?" Olivia asked. The little wisp of a girl nodded solemnly. "What did you wish for?"

She looked around before leaning close and whispering, "For Daddy to come home."

"Sweetheart…" she said softly, "he's not coming back."

"Then why didn't he say goodbye?" Lucy asked, the tears spilling out of her eyes and rolling silently down her cheeks.

Olivia lifted the girl into her arms and wiped the tears away with tenderness that only a mother can and whispered back, "Because he'll always be with us. Saying goodbye seems silly if you're not really going anywhere, doesn't it?"

Lucy pondered over the thought for a minute before nodding her head in agreement. "Can I still miss him?"

"We all can," Olivia answered glancing back at the gravesite. "I think he'd be a little disappointed if we didn't."

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the plot and Lucy. Everything else belongs to Dick Wolf.**


End file.
